Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

When I see you for the new induction sessions in October/November time my role will have changed a bit so I thought I'd give you some information now to explain how things are likely to pan out.

As you may know I currently support applied social studies and human resource management. Well from the middle of October my subject responsibilities are being adjusted.

I'll still be responsible for applied social studies, but I'm gaining the major addition of psychology. I'll also be gaining criminology and social care whilst giving up human resource management.

You're unlikely to notice any difference at all in how I support you, but I may decide to broaden the scope of the blog to include both social and psychological issues. Or I may keep the focus of this blog as it is and do something separate for the psychology students. If you've an opinion on this then tell me.

As a psychology graduate this is all quite exciting, although don't think for a second I'll be favouring psychology over applied social studies! Never fear, you've been brilliant in helping me get this blog off the ground and just generally lovely, so I won't be getting distracted by the bright lights and shiny things that the psychology department are bound to offer.

When does an overweight family become a news story?

I was coming in on the bus this morning and trying to think of a blogging topic when I heard the story of the family in Dundee who have been threatened with having their obese children taken away from them. Surely, there'd need to be more going on here than just allowing their children to become overweight? 


The Today website on Radio 4 is playing up at present so I can't link to it (they had an interview with Hilton Dawson, the chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers) but to give you a sense (if sense isn't entirely the wrong word...) of how The Telegraph has been commenting on the story take a look at this. Warning: It's liberal-baiting craziness from the Jeremy Clarkson school of sensitivity.


I've read social work guidelines on how children come to be removed from parents and I'm sure I remember that it's more complicated than just putting kids on a weighing machine. 
But that doesn't make a good headline, does it?

The Class Ceiling.

Good morning. How's thing?

Have been on holiday in Dorset with the family fossil-hunting and trying to avoid hypothermia, hence the lack of postings. I know the point of holidays is to 'get away from it all' but a cottage with no mobile signal, electricity that you could charitably call wilful and a TV with three channels is pretty far removed from our usual situation. It was great!
Anyway, I digress.

I'd like to recommend a radio programme from earlier this morning (Monday the 1st) on Radio 4.
Polly Toynbee is a journalist who writes for The Guardian with an interest in social justice and politics who's presenting a 2 part series on how class is still a massive indicator of a person's social attainment. There's some more information on the BBC website and the first part of the series is already on BBC's i-player.

As the first person from his family to go to university and as someone who regularly wrestles with the notion of what class even means ( I have great problems with the idea that a university education and love of the arts automatically imposes a middle-class status on an individual), I really enjoyed the first episode. Me and my wife have been having the class 'debate' for 12 years now. Next time you see me in the university stop me and ask who wins the argument!

40 year anniversary of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment

Earlier this week I was talking to a student about an infamous social psychology experiment from the 1970's that 'went wrong'. By coincidence, yesterday the Today programme had a short piece about the fall out that resulted from the experiment. It still sounds quite shocking, even now. If nothing else the study shows the dangers of what can happen when research is badly designed. If we go deeper it may demonstrate something about how societal roles can shape behaviour, a much discussed topic at present after the recent social unrest.

The BBC today have also commemorated the experiment with some fresh insights from the people involved.

Bill Bratton: Supercop?

You'll have probably heard a lot in the last few days about this American policeman who's about to turn up and 'sort out' everything that's wrong with the criminal justice system. As always with these contentious issues, what we're told arrives in our eyes and ears through the prism of political ideologies, whether that message is mediated by The Guardian, Fox News or Radio 5. The message is rarely, if ever, neutral.

To give you a flavour of what Bill Bratton is all about here's a video showing his talk from last year at the Policy Exchange, a right-wing charity who attempt to influence government policy. He starts talking 8 minutes into the video if you want to skip the introductions. It's a long talk and I wouldn't expect you to watch it all, but if you manage 15 minutes you'll get a taste of why he's being courted by certain interest groups.

Reported link between abuse in childhood and adult depression.

Heard yesterday of a new piece of published work claiming that individuals who have experienced abuse as children are twice as likely to experience depressive episodes as adults compared to those without such a history of mistreatment. The study also found that abused adults do not respond well to drug or psychological treatments. This study is important both in its findings and in its scale (over 20,000 participants).

We haven't access to the full-text of this study as it's published in a journal we don't subscribe to. However, if you're a 3rd Year undergrad or an MA student interested in this study you could always order it as part of your free allocation of Inter Library Loans. For more information on how and what you can order have a look on the document supply page.

Or if you need advice on how to get the best from this free service contact me via the usual routes.

New look to the university website.

This is a simple 'don't panic' post because by the time you read this the library website will have a new look. The content will be pretty much the same, it's simply that some things may have moved around the screen slightly and it'll look different.

I'll be receiving some more training soon on how to write new content for the web pages and overall the change is a good thing. The new system is easier to use so this will give me the confidence to update the web pages more often.